Fervo Energy proved fracturing can harvest geothermal energy and is now rapidly learning to build a utility-scale power plant.

Earlier this year, one of the founders of Fervo Energy announced that the geothermal innovator had reached its “Mitchell moment.”

Jack Norbeck, chief technology officer for Fervo, likened a test where it used a pair of fractured wells to create water hot enough to generate electricity to the time when Mitchell Energy adopted slickwater fracturing to economically extract large amounts of gas from the ultratight rock in the Barnett Formation.

“We have derisked all those core challenges, we reached the Mitchell Energy moment for geothermal,” Norbeck said.

By doing all that and supplying 3.5 MW of electricity to the local grid that powers Google facilities, he announced that the firm’s enhanced geothermal system (EGS), had reached the highest level of technical readiness.

Now comes the hard part—proving that technical triumph can be turned into something really big.

The Mitchell moment in 1997 is remembered because it led to a series of innovations that allowed hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling to add enough oil and gas production to move global markets.

What has been learned about fracturing in the decades since allowed oil industry veterans at Fervo to effectively use those tools to do what others had failed to accomplish—create high-volume EGS capable of generating power.

One big difference between the moments is that Houston-based Fervo’s next step looks like a leap compared to Mitchell’s.

Read the full article, including a quote from ResFrac CEO Mark McClure here.